On February 24, 2012, as Premnath Jha was riding to his home in Mumbai’s Virar area, several bullets were fired at him from a revolver . He...
On February 24, 2012, as Premnath Jha was riding to his home in Mumbai’s Virar area, several bullets were fired at him from a revolver. He died in hospital shortly after. Despite this, the police registered a case of accidental death. It was only when a postmortem was conducted at the insistence of his family that the authorities admitted that the Right to Information Act activist had been murdered.
Jha had been using the Right to Information, which allows citizens to request information from state and Central government departments, to seek details from the Vasai Virar Municipal Corporation about several construction projects.
The 42-year-old Jha was of the 89 RTI activists who have been killed since the Right to Information Act came into force in 2005. In that period, 172 cases of physical assault and 185 cases of threats or harassment linked to the RTI activism have been documented.
The highest number of attacks on RTI activists has occurred in Maharashtra. Since 2005, there have been 36 instances of assaults, 41 cases of harassment or threats and 16 alleged murders.
An ardous quest for justice
Jha’s case is among the stories of 13 murdered RTI activists that are documented in a recent report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative titled Life and Death in...
